This is I on the Ball with Steve Rivera and Jacon zalez on Fox Sports
fourteen fifty powered by Nova Insurance Services and Sure Your Most Prized Possessions, katz
R two SAG and iHeartRadio Station Goo. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to
your Eye on the Ball here on Fox Sports fourteen fifty. I'm Steve Rivera.
I think we have Jacon Zellas on the line. I'm here between coughing
up a storm, but I'm here. Okay, so you've never sound better.
We'll see sEH. Thank you so much. Yeah, yeah, I
appreciate that. Don't make me laugh laugh he makes me cough. Okay,
okay, we don't want that. And then we got a great Sammy's back.
Sammy the prodigal Son has returned back. Yes, yeah, very cool.
We got Sammie back, We got Jay kind of back, and I'm
here. Uh, you know, so we got thirteen minutes. Anybody want
to call good luck? Five to two O four one six four? Do
you have We can do it. I think we can do Ready, we
have a couple of great guests coming in today. Who do we have Jay?
Well? We uh always an interesting conversation with Rachel Webb, the sports
psychologist in the U of A athletic department, just kind of, you know,
find out what's on the what's on the minds of some of these student
athletes with all the stuff that they've got to think about, right right,
We had around them a year or so ago, and a lot of fun.
She enjoyed our company, which is crazy, but she and she enjoyed
talking about all the things that go on psychologically with the kids, with the
students. So that'll be fun. And then in the second half, we
have an interview with Dustin Peace, just retired from the CEO coaching, so
we'll get the scoop on that. Yes, so now let you know,
arguably the two top programs or two of the top programs in two uh have
your coaches next year South Point U DVE help me out the job, Eric
Rodgers, Eric Well. Eric Rodgers called it a day over there and he
was replaced by their defensive coordinator at Dustin Peace. Coming off of state championship,
he decided to call it a night. So it'd be interesting to find
out what was on his mind, right right, So we'll see what happens
with all that, and Okay, so I don't know if you you were
tired, you're sick, or whatever you're doing last night. But two big
games, two big upsets. In fact, Iowa State messed me on a
parlay and they beat the number one and number two teams for the first time
in forty years. Went down on the same night. Oh I did see
Purdue went down. I did not know that Houston also went down. Wow,
okay, top two. And now of course Arizona fans were rejoicing other
people's demise and it means nothing to Arizona. Well again, Stevid, it
just you know, for every arizon A fan who lost their minds when they
got beat by Stanford or when they got beat by fau even when they got
beat by by Purdue. In basketball, teams are going to lose. There's
thirty some games. You're not going to go undefeated. It's not going to
happen. So a team's gonna lose the game. What you do is you
pick it up and you go on to the next one, right, no
question, And it all matters in a couple of months. It's already going
to be a couple of months before we start going with the PAC twelve.
Uh, PAC twelve time tournament and then we get ready for the actual NCAA
tournament. So we're looking forward to that and only two months away. Right.
All that matters, Steve, All that matters is that you get your
stuff together, you figure out, you know, what went wrong, try
and fix that, and then just go win some more games and just win
enough to get the you know, some sort of a you know, the
high seed that you're looking for, because that's what you're playing for now.
It's almost like conference championships for a program like Arizona. Yeah, do fans
love winning the league? Of course? Do they love winning the tournament?
Of course they do because they're all there and it's more fun. But in
the end, what Arizona fan wants is to win a n c double A
tournament and you gotta, you know, you gotta get a good seed to
do that, right, right, And that's what necessarily go ahead, mister.
You want to know, you want to get a good seed to give
yourself a best shot. You don't have to have one, you want one.
Yeah, the championship against the nine. I agree, I agree.
Hey, you weren't on the show yesterday. You were taking your reds uh.
We didn't talk about, but I'll have both of you guys on the
beatdown that Michigan had in Washington to the game. We were off. We
were off, way off. We were way off. And you know,
I had to give in and say, Michigan, it was the best team
in the country, and they played like it. I didn't expect them.
What I what I didn't expect was to see Washington's offensive line get handled the
way they got handled. Chigan just obliterated him and they they they made Michael
Penix look bad. And uh, you know, people are gonna blame it
on Penis, but he had no time to throw and and you know,
we saw that happen with No Fla Fida, and happened with Jade Delora,
and happened with everybody else. If your line can't block your your quarterback skills
deteriorate quickly. And that's what happened. I still think Michael Penix was the
best player in the country, but Michigan made him ordinary by uh, you
know, by dominating the offensive line. And it's as simple as that.
When he had opportunities, he didn't capitalize. He threw over the he over
threw the ball a bunch of times. One was agreedious, you know,
way way open, and yeah, and if and if he connects with Rome
there, maybe they score, maybe they don't. Maybe he's downright in the
red zone and that game maybe has changed a little bit. But you just
saw his well. And when they played Texas you saw his mobility a little
bit. He was able to run for first downs, but they were able
to bottle him up inside the pocket and not let him run for first downs.
He just looked if you watched the full game, he looked uncomfortable from
the first snap, and that's what you had to do as Yeah, I
almost hate to use this sword. But you know, after after the first
few possessions, I think he got a little skittish and he was releasing,
you know, throwing the ball sooner than he was, sooner than they he
should have, and he just was out of sworts the whole time. Uncomfortable
maybe is a better word. But Michigan just Michigan did that. And then
on the other side, Michigan ran the hell out of the ball. So
they dominated the trenches and you know, we thought if they did that,
they were going to win the game. Whoever did that was going to win
the game. And that's exactly what happened. And and you know, Washington,
even though they stayed in striking distance, I never once Michigan scored those
first two touchdowns. I never thought Washington was going to win the game.
So let me ask you both. And I said this to uh to Kevin
yesterday. I felt really young, comfortable, and unfortunate for with with Pinis
at the end, near the final five minutes or so, when he was
still in the game and he was clearly suffered and clearly hurt, and they
still had him in the game. I'm thinking, either he's requesting this or
Washington's kind of overstepping his health because he look bad. I'd like to think
that Pennick said, I want to I want to stay in there and try
and give us a shot, knowing that if he came out of the game,
then you know, there's no more answers. It's done, it's over,
the game's over. Whereas he felt, I would have thought that,
being the warrior that he is and has been all year long, that he
wanted to give it a shot to get them back in the game because score
wise they were doing okay. And then you know, until the very end.
I would put it on him that he said, I need to stay
in there. I want to stay in there. I think it's hard because
maybe, yeah, go ahead, I would say, and maybe that'll come
out later on down the road, you know, when he there's some more
recaps of this that he requested to stay in the game, I would,
if I had to put money on it, I would say say that he
wanted to stay in Yeah. I think he's been your guy all year.
And I mean, to Steve's point, I think he was dealing with a
little bit of ribs stuff and the ankle when it got stepped on, was
he was grabbing that thing all yeah, so we'll see yeah, And I
mean at that point if he doesn't get hit, I don't know how his
throwing motion was affected by that, but that had to have been a Pennix
thing, because I think it was pretty clear after his second pick that he
was in a lot of discomfort. And I mean, if you're if you're
a quarterback you've been riding all year, asked to go back in the game,
finish it off. No matter what I think, as a coach,
you have a hard time saying, well, now that you said that because
I remember the second pick to start the second second half that was just horrible
and that was just a bad decision. Yeah, so if he's trying to
throw it out, he needed to do it better. I agree, and
it well because he got stepped on. That was the play that his ankle
got stepped in and I was questioning it too, like why couldn't you just
throw it away? And I don't know if that affected him being able to
not throw it out of bounds. He he got stepped on by his own
guy, and I mean, Johnson made a really good play. He went
up to grab it and then away. Yeah. I forget who the receiver
was. I want to say it was one of their one of their top
three guys tried to knock it out and then still was able to make the
pick. It was one of the better plays of the night. But to
Jay's point, honestly, like maybe countering, I thought, having watched Washington
maybe more than I've watched Michigan all year, it just felt that they were
gonna get in the end zone and tie the ballgame when it was twenty to
thirteen for what seemed like the whole third quarter. I don't know if you
guys felt the same way having watched the game. But it just felt like
Pennix had one drive in him where they were gonna be able to tie the
game. I don't know that holding. I think, yeah, it was
brutal when they finally made that deep play. Yeah, he played them.
They got called a lot from that. Yeah, they were just getting dominated.
Like Jay said, offensively end even see on that line. Yeah,
well yeah, you know when, as Steve knows, I always overthink this
in my overthinking mode. You know, even though it was sort of at
a standstill in the third quarter, I thought with the way the way Michigan
was running the ball, that they would wear Washington down in the fourth quarter.
That why if Michigan was if the game was tied or Michigan was ahead,
that Washington was not gonna be able to catch him because I thought Michigan
would ultimately be able to wear him down by running the ball and be effective
that way. And they were. I tried all year long to not give
Michigan credit for the team that they were. There's the there's the sign stealing
stuff and all that stuff, but you know what, they were pretty damn
good. You know, there's people saying, well, Georgia would have beat
him, and so I don't know, I don't know that Michigan was damn
damn good and you got to give them credit for that. No, you're
doing they they played their brand of football almost perfectly from the opening kickoff to
when Blake Korum got a second touchdown, which I know a lot of people
were probably sweating him scoring two touchdowns, But they did exactly what Harbaugh and
his staff wanted to do for the entire year, and that was play physical
in both lines, run the ball, and playing the play action. And
JJ McCarthy, if you watched the last couple of games, he wasn't asked
to do a lot, but he was able to do it pretty dang well.
So he was a quarterback who was good enough to win a national championship.
And I saw this thing along ahead, Well, I was gonna say
along the lines of that Georgia quarterback from a couple of years ago. Right,
he wasn't a great quarterback, you know he's, but he was good
enough to because Michigan was so I mean, Georgia was so good everywhere else.
It's the same thing, JJ McCarthy, you know, could he be
a brock pretty type of guy in the NFL maybe, but for now,
I mean, I still think I still think Michael Pennix is three times the
quarterback that JJ McCarthy is. But JJ McCarthy can do the things he needed
to do to win games like this, and he did it, and you
got to give him credit for that as well. Yeah, I think the
last I saw this the other day, the last three quarterbacks to win national
championships or J McCarthy, Mac Jones, and Stinton Bennett for Georgia. Those
are your last four national championship quarterbacks when I mean I kind of grew up
watching Shaun Watson, Trevor Lawrence, I mean, Andrew Luck and ever won
one. But those guys were competing for national championships, like Bryce Young,
even CJ. Stroud, We're competing for national championships. But it's interesting to
see, especially in college football that not to say those guys were game managers
per se, because mac Jones was a top pick and Cince of Bennet got
drafted obviously, but if you have the guys around them, then that's really
what you need. And you saw it with Caleb Williams in USC this year
too, it really matters what's around those guys. Yeah, okay, we
got about two minutes Jay. Moving forward, We're gonna have Rachel Webb here
in about five minutes, six minutes, so look forward to that conversation again.
We'll have Dustin Piece on the other side of the hour, so and
you'll have breaking news for us. Oh yeah, I got some good stuff.
Oh okay, I brought some talking points. Cool, just a just
a program note. I know we didn't get or I didn't get the podcasts
up for Monday and Tuesday. We got asked about that on social media.
We will get those up today, so I'll post all three of those after
the show today and we let everybody get caught up because we had some pretty
good conversation. We had Justin Spears on uh in Studio for forty five minutes
Jack mcgriday. We talked about the National Championship game. Honestly, guys,
I only heard the first segment yesterday and then I went back to sleep,
so I didn't I didn't hear yesterday show. So we had We had Marquis
Flowers or was he in the first hour sickond there first first hour? Yeah,
so Marquise he was. He was different. He was fun, great
candid and that was and that was a lot of fun. Okay, so
let's just take the break now. I would break it under a minute,
uh, and then come back with with Rachel on the other side. Cool.
I know you guys missed my country was like, I don't want to
feel the thing. No more him now, I just want to sip till
the blame where boom me pull me another round them open, knock them damps.
Let's go sign never lock these beef. Don't want to think about it.
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I on the Ball with Steve Rivera and Jay Gonzalez on Fox Sports fourteen fifty.
Hey, welcome back to laying the ball here Fox Sports fourteen fifty.
I'm Steve Robera. We have Jay Gonzalez with us, and we also have
Rachel Wimp, the UA sports psychologist, Dick Shortenaiir, how you doing,
Rachel? I'm well, how are you? We're duing playing? Thanks for
joining J and I. The last time we spoke to you, we came
off a lot more smart. We're smarter the last time, and God knows
we need that, So thank you for joining us again. I appreciate you
guys welcoming me back with such kind sentiments. Yes, no, great,
So how is it going over there? I'm assuming and this is just me
being me that because of all success and you've been there for a few years,
football is running well, basketball is doing well. With all those two
sports doing that, you have less issues or do the issues still remain the
same because everyone you know that cliche winning solves problems. It solved some problems.
That part of the cliche is true. Yeah, I've been here for
about five years to answer the first little piece. But things are going well.
I mean, I think the nature of our role is that we're not
necessarily here just to solve the really big issues, but we're also trying to
elevate all the time. So what it took to be successful one semester one
year is going to be different to some degree in the next season, in
the next year. So always evolving. You know, we're also still working
with humans, so we have all the same problems that every other human faces
too. Yes, well, Richie, know, one of the things that
we constantly talk about is how many more issues athletes are dealing with. We
probably talked about that a little bit with your last time you were on.
But you know, when you've got nil and you've got transfer portal and you
got all these other things that you know, athletes ten years ago, five
years ago, didn't have to deal with how much more does that add to
what you have to do and how much more you work with some of these
athletes. Yeah, that's a phenomenal question. It's funny to think that,
you know, a couple of years ago, I would have said that the
extra added stress was social media, and now we've got the transfer portal and
NIL, which are absolutely massive and play a huge role. I mean,
especially for the high profile teams like the two you initially brought up football basketball.
These folks are getting recruited constantly, obviously within NPAA regulation, but that's
always on their mind. You know, there's always an option to leave now,
whereas that was not a thing before. Was you just find a way
to make the most of your situation. And so I think what's been interesting
is for me and my staff, we really you know, we're meeting the
players in a different way with you know, do they want to stay,
do they want to go? And then how do we really develop them in
a much shorter time Potentially, you know, we might only have one year,
two year, or just a season to really help somebody get better in
any way, shape or form, you know, physically, mentally, emotionally,
So it puts a little bit of a different perspective, a little bit
more pressure on us to try to get them ready for whatever is they're doing.
And then it's just the decision making then figuring out as their young men
and women, the path that they want to take. And they have a
lot more options now, and I guess that's really just answering the transfer portal
situation. I think NIL trying to manage their budgets and deals and you know,
media and having to commit to quite a few different engagements, even get
some of these endorsements. It's a ton to juggle because nothing changes about the
amount of hours it takes to be a student and an athlete right right your
bendwidth. It remains the same when you have other things going on with it.
So let me just go back to the social media portion of it,
because that was pre this NIL stuff. So and everyone's different. Some people
are sensitive to the to the media, to social media criticism. Some not.
What's the recommendation for student athletes because you know, they're twenty eighteen all
that they love the social media, but sometimes it get criticized. Do you
kind of say, don't read it, don't watch it, put it down.
Yeah, I don't have a one size fits all. But for the
most part, a good rule of some is answering the question is it helpful?
Some people will say, yep, it's fueled my fire, it helps
me stay focused, it helps me work harder the next day. Some people,
their answer is absolutely not. You know, I go in a tailspin
until three in the morning watching, you know, listening, reading all these
really outlandish and terrible things that folks tend to say behind their screen. So
that's usually our first question, is it helpful? Second question, why are
you using it? What's kind of a point to function? And then we
go from there. But it's absolutely a conversation with almost everybody at some point
in time, especially our our high profile people, you know, on that
point. And we've talked about it a few times. You know, a
few years ago, you know, you had the the Arizona kicker of Casey
Scourn who missed a field goal against USC would have won the game, and
he's getting death threats and stuff like that. That's probably an extreme example,
but still that's something things like that, that's the type of stuff you're dealing
with. Isn't it. Yeah, absolutely, that is extreme, but it's
not uncommon by any stretch, which is you know, probably sad in a
ton of ways, but everybody from our coaching staff to our athletic administrators to
our players, you know, every everything that they do is criticized and there's
a comment and some obviously are much more harmful than others. But you know,
we've definitely had a lot of situations where fans, even our own fans,
which I think is always a little bit surprising to me, have a
ton to say. You know, even if you think about sitting in your
local you know, bar how much commentary they is. Whether it's just from
the people sitting next to you or on TV. Everybody has an opinion,
and especially when it's kind of a contrasting subject, there's even more folks who
tend to come out of the woodworks and don't have a ton of shame and
guilt and what they're willing to say to these young people. Yeah, no
question, we talked to them before on the air or did you have something,
Jay, Yeah, I was. I was going to say, So
what do you say to them in those kinds of situations? As you say,
probably not a one size fits all, But what do you tell them?
Oh, it's a great question. Depends on the player, it depends
on our relationship. But I'm a big fan of evidence and fact checking,
and that's usually where we'll start, is like, how much truth is there
to this statement? Again, how helpful is it to read about this?
How much do you trust this person's opinion. That's very hard to trust someone's
opinion that you've never heard of and you know, at whatever whatever on their
their Twitter handle. So yeah, we'll really take a pretty logical approach.
Do we trust it, is there evidence to support it? How is it
helpful for you? What do you want to do this information? And then
typically trying to redirect their attention in the same way that they do on the
court or the field. They have to have good control over their focus and
especially to be elite on and off the field, So we'll talk a lot
about where their attention does need to go, which is on their training,
on their loved ones, on their support system, you know, hearing from
people that they really trust their opinions about, hearing from people in the building
who know a lot more about situations. So we'll do a little bit of
attentional shifting too. You have no question and the and the storylines are you
know, constant. You know what used to be at the bars is now
online And I get but I tell jer this all the time. It frustrates
the hell out of me, even and I'm not even involved. I'm just
reading the darm thing with these kinds are just a bunch of fools talking on
the internet. But let me ask you something. Had I not done this,
I would have loved to do what you do. And I think I've
told you that already. But you do what you do. Do you have
a big staff because obviously there's like five hundred student athletes there. Yeah,
it is a lot, and I could have ten people, and I think
we'd still have work to do, which is honestly a testament to the coaches
and the players here. Everyone is wants to get better, whether regardless of
kind of where they're at in the spectrum of their mental health their mental performance.
So it is myself and I've got two other full time sports psychologists,
our director and assistant director, doctor Mike Clark and doctor Jenny Kraska. And
then Michael Manswell is our new retire He's an academic counselor, and yeah,
the four of us split up teams. I obviously oversee all of them,
and then we do have a couple of interns and and some other folks in
the community that help us serve all five hundred. That's called job security.
Yeah, I'm telling you, it looks different at every single university, and
we have an incredible setup with to your guys' first question, we're not just
coming in and doing crisis work, right. I've met with five of our
teams in the past two days, and it's just incredible that everybody knows your
name, what you do, how to get a hold of you, the
things they can work on, and you know, it's really shifted to like
elevating what they're doing, not just hey, worst case scenario, you know,
go down this dark hallway and meet with the psychologists behind closed doors.
It's a very different feel on this campus, which is really awesome. Well,
well, let me ask you as far as that goes in, so
it sounds like you're doing something, you're trying to hit some things off before
things become a problem, before that escalates into some sort of a serious mental
issue, how do you figure out I guess you could just gotta be really
smart, like you are, what to do how to work with student athletes,
so that either to prepare them or to help them deal with stuff as
it's coming instead of waiting for it to get to a situation that becomes,
you know, very difficult to handle. Yeah, that's a great question,
and I think again a compliment to the coaching staffs we have here, so
a good you know, one approach to that is we try to just be
around a lot. There's a ton of value in FaceTime and being a part
of you know, the coaching staff, the athletic training staff, and so
a lot of times it's us being here and being able to like pseudo educate
other coaches, other staff members, athletes. You know, after my third
practice will come up and ask me random questions and we might start and this
happened, you know, ninety percent of the time. We might start with
like, hey, I just get so nervous before the game, or I
get so in my head right before the snap and I feel like I can't
remember my route that I'm supposed to run, and that might the initial conversation
on the sideline, and you know, maybe that is all that's presenting at
that time. But eventually, if something does come up, if they do
have more mental health concerns, that relationship is already there, so they know
who to call, they know how to reach out. They don't wait until
you know, worst case scenario, you know there's some serious safety concerns or
you know, more serious mental health illnesses and concerns going on. So being
around a lot, having a lot of that face time and like sideline conversation,
side court conversations, and we actually meet with every single student athlete when
they come to campus, both in August and right now in January while they're
all coming back, we will make sure to get in front of the team
and the individuals to check in make sure they know what they can do.
And with certain teams we do it quite a bit of programming, like you
said, Jay, being able to give them some skills that they might not
have had to use quite yet. But how can we kind of build that
flexibility and that resilience over a couple of months, you know, before or
they really start to get tested in their seasons and everybody has their own solve
right. If you saw the Michigan quarterback, I guess he does some zen
work near the goal and that's how he kind of gets centered and all that
and gets prepared. I'm assuming that you have like five hundred and each one
of them is an individual of whatever they want to do. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, I think he's a great example of just the power of
you know, meditation and being present focused. It's so much harder than people
think it is. All of us, could you know, utilize that that
skill. But yeah, every single athlete it looks different how they incorporate it.
You know, our baseball players what it looks like in their pre work.
Their pre routine is they walk onto the mound or the box. So
that's what's great about you know, I love getting to educate them in groups
and doing some programming, but we also try to take a pretty individualized approach
and talk through what do you need to be saying, what are the cues,
you know what, what's most helpful for what they're dealing with. Well,
the funny thing about is the reason I just said he just get ahold
of Rachel again is on the sideline. I don't know if you saw that
where he hugged his psychologists, you must have felt like, you know,
see, my stuff is worthy. Yeah, it's funny you bring that up.
That was amazing. That's always a great moment for you know, a
field that's still right, to be honest, budding, you know, definitely
young and in a lot of ways. And we had a conversation with some
colleagues yesterday about that. And you know a lot of our work is behind
closed doors. Just that's the nature of it. And it makes us effective
and it's very valuable, but it definitely doesn't always get the the TLC that
maybe it deserves. So moments like that are very exciting. Sure. So
are there any certain certain types of issues or things that are more common than
others that you find yourself dealing with you know, quite a bit or is
it just a little bit of everything? Well, and if I could,
Jay, you know, you have women and you have men who are totally
different. Yeah, yeah, awesome question. I'm curious if you guys any
guesses, any guesses of like the most like main presenting concern across student athletes.
I would say, I would say, because we've been told this a
long time ago, forever, you know, don't bet on kids because they're
kids, they're nineteen twenty. You can't try, you can't trust them.
There's anything girlfriend issues, boyfriend issues, school issues, there's all kinds of
issues. But my thing would be probably emotional issues with with with with significant
others. That's that's a great guess. So yeah, they definitely have all
those things going on. They're kids, like one hundred percent. I think
we tend to forget that, especially in this model of NIL and the transfer
portal. They have agents by the time they're sixteen. But the biggest issue
we seem to face is sleep, and most people struggle with that. We
I'm sure adults, grown adults are struggling with it, but I think just
the time demand, the emotional and cognitive stress that they're going through, that
is absolutely a very high priority and one of the first resources to go and
unfortunately one of our greatest performance resources is having adequate sleep. We definitely don't
don't sleep enough. I think is like a population. But yeah, we
see everything beyond that. I mean, I would say our highest in terms
of mental health are probably depression and anxiety. Student athletes, you know,
do rank much higher than the average student population and their levels of depression anxiety,
but they also, according to some recent research, are less likely to
reach out and so there's becomes worse than kind of the average student on campus.
Yeah, so our statistics here would definitely go against that, which is
incredible. You know, even just with our football program recently, we were
able to pull out some survey information that we had sixty percent of our guys
checking in with somebody at some point in the season, and that's about six
times the amount that you would see across any other campus. So that was
really reassuring. And on the performance side, yeah, super individualized, but
a lot of it comes down to managing pressure and just being able to execute
and manage their focus depending on what's going on on the field. Okay,
well you have another question, Jay, We're pretty much out of time.
No, I'm good. I'm good, really interesting. So we're going to
have our Zen weekly moment with you every ten minute, every every other day,
every other week of Zen. Rachel is Zen teaching. Bye? How
about you here for however? I can support the two of you. You
guys have a great influence on hundreds and thousands of people. I'm here for
it. Well, thank you. How much do you charge? Because I
need to sleep? I have been sleep issues, Rachel, big time,
big time. All right, Well, yeah, I don't have I don't
have anxiety. Yeah, I don't have anxiety about playing time because I don't
play. So we're good. Rachel, thanks a bunch. We hope to
have you on again as we get nearing the end of the semester. Definitely
have a good one, guy, Rich. I appreciate it. Always good
stuff. I always come away smarter, don't you a little bit? Yeah?
I love bit. Okay, I still don't know. I'm gonna sleep
better tonight, but okay, I'm gonna take a nap in the next two
minutes. I'll be back in five. All right, guys, all right,
yeah, that's two on one. Well, can't go on the corner.
If you're an Arizona man's basketball fan, you know it's been successful for
nearly forty years. Now. Take a look back at the Ludelsen era in
my new book, Lessons from Loot. It was a labor of love through
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What one email me at Steve dot RIVERA ninety five at gmail dot com.
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Team security dot net. This is high on the Ball with Steve Rivera and
Jay Gonzalez soun Fox Sports fourteen to fifteen. Subscribe now to the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app Just Surgeon II on the Ball. Hey, welcome back to
Why the Ball Hero Fox Sports fourteen fifty. I'm Steve Rivera, He's Jaconzalez.
We've got Sammy with us, and Sammy has some great breaking news where
we have breaking news after the break. But Nick Saban is retiring from Alabama.
He will no longer be the head coach of the Crimson Tide. His
career ending with the Bama Crimson Tide losing to Michigan at the Rose Bowl.
Probably not the way he wanted to have it end, but nonetheless, six
national championships with Alabama, and that place will be building the statue probably as
we speak. Jay, it's not gonna be. Do you think it's no
matter who they get, no matter who they get, do you think it'll
be the Alabama as we know it? I do not. There was something
that he brought to that job, and actually I think, oh yeah,
he won a seventh at LSU, I forgot, but I don't know.
I think there was sort of a his personality with the way he did things.
It was like a you know, a perfect mixture of everything for them
to do what they did, because that's not something that just anybody can come
in and do. You're not going to get a coach. It's going to
just be able to come and do Alabama the way he did Alabama. At
least that's what I believe. So people at the coaches at LSU, the
guys at Oklahoma, the guys of Texas rejoicing because now they have a chance.
Yeah, I think, well, it's no doubt. It's no question
Bama is going to probably be able to get whoever they want as their head
next head coach. But to Jay's point, Saban had that program. He
knew the program like the back of his hand. He knew the guys he
wanted to recruit, what coordinators. He lost a lot of coordinators, and
it didn't seem like they blinked. Ever, those guys went to be great
coaches. And we'll see if the next head coach has the temper do you
go after some of the guys that were there with him and then come in
Mississippi State these guys, the the guys as Yeah, I mean I think
it makes sense if if you coach under Saban, those guys probably know his
style and that programs had agree as well as anything. And how much say
will he have in naming that guy? Oh? I mean, I mean
if he's retiring, I don't know if he's going to stick around the program
as much like you see coach kat Duke. Yet he'd only been to one
game since his retirement, and that's a whole new program under Shire, and
so we'll see if Saban wants to be around what he's going to do next.
But the news is that he's just retiring from the head coach of Alabama.
And we were talking at the break, like what names are going to
be started to float around, and some that just come to mind. I
mean, Dabbo Sweeney. His Clemson time is looking a little yeah, but
I'm sketchy right now. I don't think they go after him. He can't
do it there. I just that's the strange fit to me. I see,
I think it might be a decent fit. He kind of has that
same intensity that Saban brought, although Saban's was a lot more kept down a
little more. But you go after a arrival like that, I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know. It's we'll see, Jay,
do you have it. It'll be interesting, Yeah, it'll be interesting to
see. For instance, you know, if Kirby Smart decides I want to
go back to Alabama even though he's got a thing going at Georgia. They're
the best, arguably the best program in the country right now, even though
they didn't get to the he just gotta you know, Yeah, would Kirby
Smart about Lane Kiffin? Right? You know, That's that's what I was
thinking. That's exactly what I was thinking. I mean, you know,
but part of it depends on what, you know, what was it that
Nick Saban did in running the program that got them to where they got to.
What did he do in recruiting, how he recruited who he recruited,
you know, how he managed the coaching staff, all these things that you're
going to be looking to get somebody who's got all of that, and there's
probably nobody out there. Hold on, hold on, you know, hold
on. So okay, Hello, you're in the air. Hey, Hey,
Hey, you doing Steve? Hey, what's going on? Howard?
Let me turn that off? Yeah. I was at that blowout, that
pseudo blowout game because it wasn't the last one the U have a played,
actually second to last, because they didn't have two of their three best players,
and of course all the faithful. I left right after halftime. Okay,
okay, Well you're just talking about You just want to talk about basketball
and how good they're playing. Well, I'll talk about football too. I
can talk about anything. No, we're just talking. We're just talking about
Alabama or did you hear the breaking news? No? No, But because
they said he was going to stay to me, I put I put him
in a thing with Pete Carroll. They're they're both in their early seventies and
people think they're the prime and they have something left. They don't. It's
time to retire. Jay, Well it is. I mean, you know,
well, you don't realize that, you know. I mean, I
mean, I'm I'm sixty four years old and I'm tired as hell. I
can't imagine that the energy and effort it takes, you know, to be
a head football coach. Jay, with these guys in their seventies, with
the amount of work that they did, Jay, you're getting paid nine ten
million dollars a year. Your tiredness gets fixed. Well, I get it.
I get it. That's the thing. They don't need any money,
so there's no reason to do it. That's true too, that's true too.
Yeah. Yeah, how would you know they Well, they stopped doing
it. They stopped doing it for the money a long time ago, Howard.
Those guys they're doing it because they love it and it there comes a
time when they say, Okay, I don't love it enough to keep doing
it, so they stop. But and it's like everything. But I was
listening to another sports show and this player that used to play for Pete Carroll
the reason it's prime. And then and then they were talking about Russell Wilson
too. Oh he's got a lot less in the tank. No, And
certain athletes they're done too. It's time for them to you know, they've
they've reached their peak and the all they can do is go down. Yeah.
I guess it depends on the age of the on the sport. We'll
see. Yeah, okay, Howard, thanks for calling in. Yeah,
we'll see guys, all right, thank you. Okay. Back to say
to lou Cook, I'm assuming this is an easy statement that he was probably
the best football coach in my generation, uh, if not of our generation
is the best ever. Yeah, I don't know that. I don't know.
I mean of my lifetime, he's the best. And I'm twenty four,
right, and I haven't seen a I mean, you could go NFL,
you could go college coach even like talk about coach K and the cross
sport. Well, you know Belichick, I don't pay I don't pay attention
enough. He's not dynamic. Neither of them really are. He wins,
he wins, but his legacy is kind of going on the downside before.
He's a guy where he should go out on his own terms. And I
wonder if Saban maybe saw that. It's very different in college football because you
get new guys every year, every two years, you get a new quarterback
every year. It's not like in Bill's case, where granted he was part
GM as well, he had a saying who those guys were he was gonna
coach. But Sabin, for example, could go out and get the best
recruiting class tomorrow, his team would still be very good and he'd give them
a chance to win. And in Bill's case, there's a lot of things
that went wrong for him. But I mean, as a kid that grew
up watching these guys win and win and win. It's I don't know if
sad's the right word, but it's very interesting to see this new wave of
guy young coaches, Yeah, winning and stepping up, and those guys per
se, I mean retiring. Pete Carroll's done, Nick Saban's done. We'll
see what happens with Bill Belichick. So, I don't know, it's very
interesting that those so jay when you watch a game, and I think this
happened to me over the weekend. I'm not sure where when I saw.
You know, they pan the coaches and they're fairly young. When you when
you look at the games and they pans are the coaches, and you see
because you're, like you said, you're sixty four years old, and you
say, God, these guys doing thirty nine and forty What do you think?
God? Am I old those guys? Yeah? No, those guys
seem really young to me. You know, Jed Fish for some reason,
Jed Fish doesn't look for it. What is he forty forty five six forty
five forty six? I'm sorry, Jed, you's or if it's you've been
in the sun too much playing tennis or what it is. When I see
Jed Fish. I don't see him the same age as Tommy Lloyd. Hold
on, okay, we got another call. Shoot, okay, okay,
so give us a call if you'd like. You got you know what I'm
saying, He Jed Fish seems older than Tommy Lloyd, and I think they're
about the same age. Yeah, no, I hear you. But he
also mid forties. They also talked differently. They have a different presence,
if that makes any sense. Well, and I think I think right now
it's it's ultra important. We've got the couple. Okay, let's take it
real quick. Are you're on the air the moon? Hey, how's it
gone today? Good? Good? You got about two minutes Brian to what
happens? No, no problem about Nick Saban. You know, the guy
can still coach. I don't care. He's seventy seven years old. Whatever.
He got him into the He got him into the Final four, and
I lost the game in overtime. You know, you know, I think
he still he probably said, I just don't want to do him anymore.
Not so much because of the coaching. I think it's all the other stuff
around the coaching now, the ni M, the transfers and everything else,
and all the recruiting maybe just takes too much out of them. I don't
think the coaching does. I think it's all the other stuff totally. I
totally agree. Like we say, we had Ken Dre, we've had Rubio,
some of these guys to say, I love to love the job,
but I just don't deal with it anymore, right, Jake, Yeah,
Yeah, it's truly one of those BacT These guys got to a point where
you know, it's just not coaching anymore. You know, there's just too
much involved, and it's it's a younger man's game now. Yeah. Well,
in fact, Brian, I think it's a you've been a younger man's
game for a long time, just that you know, you know, we're
no longer young. Yeah, And somehow these guys like like the these guys
like Saban and Pete Carroll and those guys have been able to keep winning in
spite of how how much the game has changed. I was just going to
say that before Brian called it it's a young man's game. Now you need
young They have to relate more to the players than they used to have to,
right, Okay, Brian, anything else you got about thirty seconds,
Jay, get better, shout you shot. I'm working on it. Thank
you. It's full of disease. I know I'm never going again. Thanks
thanks for the call. Yeah, okay, your thought real quick before we
go, we had about no but but but that was my thought. I
was really I was literally about to say that that. You know, when
you're looking at the coaches and the agetting younger and younger and younger, I
think they have to get younger and younger and younger because they're having to deal
with athletes on a different level. You know, you can't be the grandpa
that tells athletes this is the way it is, that's my way or the
highway. It doesn't work that way anymore. And that's why again, guys
like the coaches that you mentioned a minute ago, Steve, they get out
because they they they don't want to have to do that anymore. It's like,
Okay, I've done my thing, so fine, I've done it.
There's also a fine line, and I want to say, maybe we'll get
to this on the other side. But if you're a young guy and you
have a young coach, do you how much do you respect the guy?
And whereas if you have an older dude. And I'll use Luda as an
example. Talking to the guys. They played for him hard because they didn't
want to disappoint him. Maybe a little scared, maybe a little scared.
I hear you. So there's a you know, there's a fine line in
between both. No, I hear that, And that's why. And the
good coaches are the really really good coaches are the coaches who can one be
the players coach, but two have the respect of the players at the same
time, right, And some coaches can't get both, And those are the
ones that have a tough time, right right, Okay, we gotta go,
we gotta go. Get to you on the other side, Jay,
we have a dustin piece too. Let's go, let's go. We'll get
time to go.